Against this slovenly indifference we have already remonstrated, and we again enter our protest....

We are the more earnest in this matter, because it seems that the author errs chiefly from carelessness.

There may be something of system in it, however, for we have remarked, that with an attention which amounts even to affectation, he has avoided the common language of narrative and thrown his story, as much as possible, into a dramatic shape.

In many cases this has added greatly to the effect, by keeping both the actors and action continually before the reader and placing him, in some measure, in the situation of an audience at a theater, who are compelled to gather the meaning of the scene from what the dramatis personae say to each other, and not from any explanation addressed immediately to themselves.

But though the author gain this advantage, and thereby compel the reader to think of the personages of the novel and not of the writer, yet the practice, especially pushed to the extent we have noticed, is a principal cause of the flimsiness and incoherent texture of which his greatest admirers are compelled to complain."[360] Lockhart points out that the fruit of Scott's study of Dryden may have been to fortify his opinion as to what the greatness of literature really consists in, and applies to Scott himself some of the phrases used in the characterization of the earlier poet.